


Dream Big

by Vintage (sour_gummies)



Category: Digimon Tamers
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Multi, Original Character-centric, Tamers Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2015814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sour_gummies/pseuds/Vintage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takato and his friends weren't the only children in the world to become tamers. In fact, wild Digimon realized out of the network across the globe, seeking human partners. These are the stories of the people they met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ENTER → Real World [Noémi, Luc: France]

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the world of Digimon Tamers, and is canon-compliant with everything that happens in that universe. The plot is OC-based, meaning it will strictly revolve around original characters from all over the world and their Digimon (all of which are canon, no fanmade Digimon). I always thought it was at least a possibility that other children in the Tamers world might have received Digimon partners besides the main group in Shinjuku, and, while I haven't seen any canon evidence for Wild Ones realizing outside of Japan, I also don't think there was anything directly contradicting it. This is especially true since the 'Network,' where Digimon physically exist, could be presumed to exist all over Earth wherever there are people connected online.
> 
> At this point in time I DO NOT have plans for the main cast (i.e., Takato, Jenrya, Ruki, etc.) to make any appearances, outside perhaps a few newscasts/televised cameos. The fic alternates among a large number of original characters living in different parts of the world at varying points in time. Some characters and plot lines will receive more focus than others, and not all characters who get their own chapters are considered part of the "main" cast. The D-Reaper mess will probably come up at some point, but I haven't decided when.
> 
> Constructive feedback is always appreciated, so please leave comments if you read and would like to say anything!

The French commune of Vertou might have been part of a larger metropolitan area, not far south of Nantes, but the particular neighborhood where Noémi and her family lived was always fairly quiet in the afternoon. It gave her valuable time to think as she walked from her school, passing a number of small shops and buildings in the street without really seeing them at all.

Wind from the distant river _Sèvre nantaise_ blew over the town in cool gusts, sweeping at times through Noémi's dark brown hair. The short strands whipped loosely about her face, obscuring her view of the street, before she mechanically brushed them back again with one hand. It was nothing she wasn't used to.

"—all this _fog_ lately, you wouldn't even believe—"

"—trust me, I know. And it's not just here, my brother in Canada told me yesterday that they had a—"

Passing voices drifted in and out of Noémi's ears as she made her way toward the local primary school. For the most part, she ignored them. She was caught up in her own thoughts, most of which were about the chores and homework she'd have to finish tonight if she wanted to get to bed at a decent hour. Papa had recently started a new job, one that kept him busy in the evenings, and he'd made it clear to Noémi that the upkeep of the apartment would fall to her out of necessity while he was away.

Noémi had protested at first, not liking the weight of having so many responsibilities resting on her twelve-year-old shoulders. Now, though, she was more or less used to their new routine. In fact, the only thing that could still get tiring sometimes was watching over Luc.

Speaking of whom...

Noémi finally arrived at the front gates of the primary school, slowing to a halt as she scanned the outside of the building for signs of her younger brother. Other children were clustered in groups of three or four, and chatted idly while they waited for their parents, but as per usual Luc's dark head of messy brown hair was nowhere to be found. With a sigh, Noémi approached the nearest professor.

"Madame Guyot?" she asked timidly, hoping to get the woman's attention. "Have you seen...?"

The instructor turned, her mouth half-opening to issue a reprimand, but she stopped when she recognized Noémi. "Ah, hello there!" the woman said with a smile, relaxing her posture. "It's always a pleasure to see any former student of mine—especially one who was always so bright at math. Tell me, Noémi, have you been keeping up your grades lately at your new school?"

"I...I have, yes," Noémi lied, feeling a hard sting of guilt. "Everything's going wonderfully."

Truthfully, her grades had recently suffered quite a bit, as a result of the added pressure of looking after the apartment and her brother in the evenings when she might normally have been studying. Noémi knew it was a problem, one that would only grow worse as the year went on, but she hadn't had the heart to talk about it with her father yet. She'd always been a good student before; more than anything she hated the thought of disappointing Papa when he'd obviously trusted her with so much in such a short amount of time. What would he think if he knew she couldn't even handle her schoolwork?

The professor interrupted Noémi's thoughts with a hand rested gently on her shoulder. "That's very good to hear," Mme Guyot said kindly. "As always, let me know if you need any help, all right?"

"O-Of course," Noémi told her with a shaky smile.

"Good," Mme Guyot said, nodding briskly. "Now—if it's young Lucas you're looking for, I believe I saw him not long ago in the schoolyard with one of his friends. Your brother is a bright one like you, Noémi, but I do wish he'd pay more attention in class...and less on those strange little foreign card games of his."

"I'll be sure to talk to him about it when we get home," Noémi assured her, making a mental note to do exactly that. After all, Madame Guyot wasn't the first of Luc's teachers to complain that his constant preoccupation with "Digimon" was an obstruction to his studies, and it seemed to Noémi that at least _one_ of the Simonet siblings ought to be doing well in school.

She walked around the side of the building to the yard, where to her surprise, Luc was seated cross-legged in the grass beside a mousy-looking girl his own age. The two of them were poring over a a sprawling arrangement of Digimon cards, laid out before them in messy rows on the ground.

"...But you can only evolve your Digimon if all the requirements are met for that turn," Luc was telling the girl matter-of-factly, his ordinarily dreamy voice uncharacteristically focused and intense. "If you want to evolve to Adult, for example, you have to already have a Child Digimon in play."

"And then, after Adult—it evolves to Perfect level, right?" the girl asked him pensively.

"That's right!" Luc said, flashing her an encouraging smile. "Child level is first, then Adult, then Perfect, and finally Ultimate, if you make it that far. But, you can only evolve a Digimon once per turn! Those are the rules."

The girl nodded, seemingly more to herself than anything else. She reached out for one of the cards on the ground and gingerly held it up between two fingers to examine it.

"I've never gotten to play this game before," she confessed, pale blue eyes scanning over the text with unmistakable longing. "I've always seen these cards in the stores, and I thought it looked like fun, but _ma mère_ said that monster games are for boys. She wanted me to keep playing with my dolls and animals instead..."

A strange expression crossed Luc's face, and he looked like he was about to say something, but at that moment he caught sight of Noémi approaching.

"Oh—hi, sis!" he called, scrambling to his feet and dusting off his school pants as she walked over to them. "You're here early today! I would have been waiting out front if I knew!"

"I'm not early, Luc," Noémi said, with an all-too-familiar sigh of exasperation. " _You_ lost track of time again. One of your teachers had to tell me where you were, or I'd still be waiting."

"Really?" he asked, blinking dumbly. Belatedly, he realized his cards were still scattered all over the ground, and he dropped down frantically to gather them up as fast as he could. "S-Sorry, Noémi! It won't happen again!"

"You said that last time," she reminded him, though she didn't press the issue. She turned to the girl who Luc had been playing with, a tiny little thing with mouse-brown hair that went almost halfway down her back in a long braid. "Hello, I'm Noémi, Luc's sister. Were he and you playing Digimon together?"

The girl nodded, her pale cheeks now tinged pink. "I'm Océane. Don't tell my Mom about this? Please," she added quickly, almost as an afterthought.

Noémi hesitated. Still, it wasn't as if she _knew_ this girl's mother, and besides, considering the sorry state of her grades, she had no room to talk when it came to keeping secrets from her family. "Okay, fine," she told the girl reluctantly. "I won't tell. But I do need to take Luc home now. You two can play again tomorrow."

The eight-year-olds nodded obediently in unison, exchanging an shared look of excitement between them. Noémi sighed again and turned to her brother.

"Ready to go?"

—

The walk home from Luc's school was always a long one, and today it was made even longer by the fact that Luc had insisted they take the scenic route down by the river. Thinking of the long list of chores awaiting her when she got home, as well as the recent spike in foggy spells near their area, Noémi had nearly refused, but one look into Luc's eager amber-colored eyes had weakened her conviction. She could hardly ever say no to her brother.

 _I'll make the time up somehow_ , she resolved, nervously fidgeting with the straps of her backpack as she walked. She tried not to think too hard about the group project she was supposed to finish for class that Friday, the others having trusted her with tying all the loose ends of their combined efforts together. The work was piling up, and she was getting seriously worried, but it couldn't _really_ be all that bad if she got her act together after today. She still had five days. _Maybe tomorrow there won't be so much extra work_...

"Hey, Noémi? Do you think Océane could maybe come over to our apartment sometime this week after class?"

Luc's words cut her anxieties short, shaking Noémi from her thoughts. Out here, away from the bustle of the streets, any words they said seemed especially loud when compared to the stillness of the water. She turned to her brother, all thoughts of chores forgotten. "You want that girl to come over?" she asked, a little surprised. "I've never even seen you with her before. I didn't know the two of you were friends until today."

"Um—well, I mean, we weren't," Luc said, glancing away in sudden embarrassment. "We only just started talking. Don't be mad, but, I was practicing Digimon again in class this afternoon, and the teacher sort of caught me with my cards in my desk...I had to write a bunch of lines, but when class was over, Océane came and asked me if I would teach her how to play when school was out. She thinks it's really cool, Noémi!"

"You got in trouble again?" Noémi demanded, stopping to fully face him. "Luc, you have to stop messing around with those stupid cards while you're in school!"

"It's not stupid!" he said, looking hurt. "Digimon is fun! And I didn't mean to get caught, it's just, class is so _boring_ , and Digimon is all I ever think about..."

Noémi bit her lip and looked away from him, slowly starting to walk again. She folded her arms tightly across her chest and looked out over the river.

"Maybe you shouldn't take your cards to school anymore, Luc," she mused quietly, not meeting his eyes. "Papa's got enough to worry about right now, without you getting into trouble over some silly Japanese game."

"No, no, Noémi!" he pleaded. "I'll be good, I promise! I'll never do it again! Digimon is my most favorite thing _ever_ , please don't take it away!"

Noémi closed her eyes and kept walking. "That part sort of worries me, too, Luc," she told him softly, worry churning in her gut like a sickness. "None of the other kids in your class like Digimon as much as you do. Why can't you get into a hobby that will help you make some friends for a change? It _can't_ be fun to sit and play by yourself."

For a long moment, Luc said nothing, and Noémi finally had to open her eyes again. Her brother looked extremely upset.

"I have a friend now, though!" he said, begging with both his eyes and his voice. "Océane likes the card game, too! Really! I bet we can be good friends if I'm really nice to her!"

"Okay, okay, fine," Noémi said, tearing her gaze away from the sadness written on his face. "For now. I just don't like how obsessive you are over this weird game."

"Noémi, what if...Digimon _wasn't_ a game?"

Noémi abruptly stopped walking. Behind her, Luc had stopped, too, staring at the ground with a tinge on his pale cheeks. He refused to look up at her, seemingly embarrassed but also oddly resolute.

"What do you mean, if it wasn't a game?" Noémi asked him sharply. "What else would it be?"

"I...nothing, really," Luc said vaguely, sounding a little detached. His thoughts seemed to be far off, even worlds apart. "It's just...sometimes, I have these dreams, and it feels so _real_. Like, they're really there."

"What?" Noémi asked, feeling something gathering in her stomach that was strangely close to fear.

"I see kids who can talk to them, have the power to _control_ them," Luc continued, finally glancing up at his sister and talking far too fast, "I _see_ _them_ and and it just makes me want to—"

" _Luc_ ," Noémi interrupted suddenly, her skin breaking out in goosebumps all over. She knew her brother could be a bit of an oddball at times, but for some reason, his words now were giving her chills, and she didn't like it at all. "Luc, Digimon isn't real. It isn't. This is the real world, and you need to get your head back into it! Digimon is just a game—your dreams are only dreams!"

He looked back at her, amber eyes wide. "But what if they aren't, Noémi?" he asked softly.

Narrowing her eyes, Noémi opened her mouth to answer him.

But before she could, a sudden pillar of light burst out from the edge of the riverbank—and all at once, the world around them erupted into fog that was dense like steel.


	2. Crossroads [Daniel: England]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The digimon that appears in this chapter is called [EbiBurgemon](http://i.imgur.com/w9MliUT.jpg). It is a a child-level, data digimon that has yet to play a significant role in any anime/game canons to date.

Daniel had no idea why he even bothered to stop.

The summer in Bradford had been long and hot—among other things—but with the beginning of September came finally coolness and the rain. There had been some unusual breakouts of fog over the past few weeks in the area where he lived, but this was the first time the humidity had actually coalesced into a shower.

Unwittingly splashing his way through a dozen puddles by the time he was halfway home, Daniel cursed himself at having left his school sweatshirt hanging up in the cupboard that morning. Already, his uniform was damp enough to cling to his skin as he ran, trapping the water that ran down his back behind his rucksack. His shoes and socks were completely soaked through; he could feel an uncomfortable squelch of water each time his feet hit against the pavement. His short, pale hair was plastered to his forehead in soaking brown locks that dripped water all the way down his face. Daniel wondered if this was how drowning animals must feel.

Making his way over to the familiar crossroads, alongside half a dozen men and women holding umbrellas, Daniel paused when he found himself at the entrance to a long, open alleyway which he knew cut cleanly through the block to the next one over. If he went through the alley, the shortcut would save him the trouble of walking all the way to the end of the street and back around. He didn't want to be out here in the rain.

He tentatively stepped up to the narrow pathway, considering, but had to stave off an instinctive prickle of fear at the darkness. It was hard to see inside the alley, and he couldn't help think about what might be lurking in the shadows. The towering brick-and-mortar walls on either side left the passage impressively dark...

But, he was being silly. Daniel shook off his nervousness and looked harder, giving his eyes time to adjust. What he saw was disheartening. There looked to be roughly half an ocean's worth of pooled water on the concrete in the alley, forming countless rippling, murky puddles around the sopping rubbish-bins. Daniel sighed and decided (not without a bit of relief) that any time he saved taking the shortcut wouldn't be worth the mud on his clothes he'd be sure to collect. He turned back to the street again, resigned to taking the long way home after all.

Suddenly, he he heard a small, piteous noise coming from the darkness behind him. Startled, Daniel turned back around, his eyes darting across the shadows between the walls to look for the source. The cry had been keening and faint, barely loud enough to reach his ears over the pouring rain, but as soon as Daniel heard it he knew for certain it must have come from a living creature. Had someone left their pet out in the rain by mistake? Who could possibly do something so...

_Wrong. All wrong._

_He was running. The night air was damp and cold, burning like ice in his lungs whenever he gasped for breath. It was so dark that he could scarcely see the freezing pavement in front of him, but he was too afraid of what might happen to even think about stopping. Already, he could feel his bare feet beginning to blister, but he paid no heed to the pain. He had to find them..._

_No._ Daniel violently shook his head, clearing the memory away with a surge of annoyance. This wasn't anything like that, he told himself sternly, just some cat. He needed to see if it was still around.

With renewed resolve, he stepped fully into the alleyway, glancing about in search of the source of the cries.

"Here, kitty," he called out. "Here, kitty kitty..."

A nagging voice at the back of his mind reminded Daniel that he didn't exactly have time to waste, digging around in rubbish-bins looking for lost animals. His cousin, Hugo, would be waiting at the museum for Daniel to call from the apartment, so as to know he'd made it home safely. If Daniel kept the older boy waiting for too long, there was a chance Hugo might get in trouble for slacking off work to hang out by the phone.

The noise came again, distracting Daniel from his thoughts. It was the same high-pitched mewling as before, pitiful and helpless. Stomach knotting in sympathy, Daniel turned his head in the direction of the sound until he caught a flicker of movement in the corner of one eye—fixating on the spot, he took a step closer, squinting until he could just make out a splash of mismatched colour shrinking back into the shadow of the nearest rubbish-bin.

Slowly, Daniel approached. He held up both hands in front of him, in the hopes that _whatever_ the thing was would be able to tell he didn't mean it any harm.

"H-Hey, there," Daniel said, in what he hoped might pass for a soothing voice. Stooping, he knelt down about half a metre away from the bin, holding one hand out in a pacifying gesture. He hoped the creature, whatever it was, wasn't the sort that would attack a person for backing it into a corner.

"Shh, don't worry, it's okay," Daniel continued. "C'mere, kitty, kitty...I'm not going to hurt you..."

He knelt down and waited motionlessly in place, waiting for the creature to emerge, if it was going to. He ignored the unpleasant sensation of muddy water as it soaked into the bottoms of his trousers, undeterred. Either the animal would come out, or it wouldn't, but Daniel wasn't about to rush things and force it to show itself if it was too afraid.

Moments passed. Then, Daniel finally saw a small, pale-coloured shape creeping forward hesitantly within the shadows. From his position, he couldn't make out exactly what sort of animal that it was, but the poor thing was obviously young and cold and frightened—the small figure was visibly shivering all over, staring out at Daniel with round eyes that reflected only darkness from the alley.

Glad to see it wasn't trying to run, or aggressively warn him off, Daniel couldn't help a relieved smile.

"There, see?" he coaxed, easing himself forward on his hands and knees. He inched slowly toward the small creature, a few centimetres at a time, until it was almost within arm's reach. "Don't worry, mate, it's all right..."

Daniel was glad to see the animal wasn't too spooked by him, as it probably meant this was someone's lost pet that could be returned. Whatever kind of animal it was, Daniel didn't have any delusions of keeping it for himself. The small flat where Daniel and Hugo lived only allowed animals on the condition of a pricey deposit fee, which the two cousins simply didn't have. At most, Daniel could only offer this lost animal some shelter and food, while it waited out the storm.

He reached out his hand for the shivering form, stopping when it shrank away from him. "Come on, it's all right," he soothed. "I know you're scared, it's cold and raining out here. Let's get you out of the ra..."

Before he could finish, a brilliant bolt of lightning lanced through the sky overhead, heralding the worsening storm—the resulting flash lit the alley and the surrounding streets so brightly that, for a moment in time, all the darkness was dispelled, bathing the rain-soaked walls and rubbish-bins in pure, blinding white. It was long enough to fully illuminate the creature that was cowering before Daniel in the shadows. The flash passed quickly, and was followed by a deafening thunderclap, but it hardly mattered.

Daniel scrambled backward with a yelp, putting as much distance between himself and the... the **thing** as he possibly could. He struggled, movements burdened by a mess of trembling limbs that all of a sudden didn't want support him. All his well-meaning sympathy had been replaced with drowning terror, because, in that split second of visibility, Daniel had seen that _whatever_ animal was lurking in the shadows of that bin, it was absolutely _not_ a house cat that had somehow gotten lost.

It was also not any other creature of this Earth.

In his haste to run, Daniel ended up forfeiting his balance, and so fell clumsily down onto his bum. Mud and dirty water splashed his school clothes, freezing and completely ignored. Daniel was upright again in an instant, frantically shoving himself up off the ground in seconds only to careen blindly headfirst into the opposite brick wall before he regained his balance. He fell back again and hit the ground hard with a cry of shock; the suddenness and rushed nature of it all made him simply curl up in terror where he landed, with his arms both cradled protectively over his head.

That, that **creature** couldn't exist, Daniel thought in a panic, overcome with helpless shivering that had nothing to do with the rain. It wasn't real, it wasn't supposed to be here. That made it a monster.

It was a monster, so it was going to attack Daniel, hurt him, it would...would...the ten-year-old shuddered in mute panic tried to think of what to do, instinctive terror paralyzing him at being faced with the unknown. A part of him surely knew that it was foolish to fear something so small, smaller even than a real cat; but Daniel couldn't _not_ be afraid, confronted so suddenly with a form so bizarrely alien and unfamiliar. It was human nature, after all, and he wasn't a brave child.

It was a full, trembling minute before Daniel was able to perceive anything outside the shroud of terror blanketing his thoughts. Finally, though, a familiar warbling noise brought him quickly and painlessly back to the present. The creature was making more of the same pitiful, mewling cries that had drawn Daniel into the alley in the first place.

The monster was just as afraid as him.

Tentatively, Daniel removed his face from his arms, letting his body uncurl. His eyes adjusted to the darkness again, and was able to make out a pale, small shape cowering still in the shadow of the rubbish-bin. On second glance, the little bizarre creature no longer looked like such an impossible, nightmarish monster—it was only small, and trembling with cold, wanting nothing more than to be away from here and somewhere safe.

Daniel could run away from it. His legs still trembled, jelly-like, but they were no longer locked with fear. He could turn tail and run back to his cousin's apartment, and pretend this hadn't even happened.

Or he could stay and try to help.

"Um, I," Daniel forced himself to croak out, stiffly sitting upright in the wet alley so his back was pressed against the wall behind him. His voice shook, as well as his traitorous body, but he bravely continued: "I-I'm, uh, s-sorry, if I, y'know, scared you there, m-mate. You just, um—kinda _startled_ me, is all."

Daniel didn't know what he expected to accomplish by talking to the creature out loud, save perhaps calming his own frazzled nerves. Animals didn't speak or understand humans unless they were trained.

However, to Daniel's great surprise, when he was finished talking the creature immediately went still. It stopped shaking and its body perked up slightly, for all the world looking as though it had actually understood.

Daniel felt like he might be going insane. "Can..." he trailed off, swallowed, and continued. "C-Can you actually hear me right now? Do you understand?"

Tentatively, the small figure poked its whole head out from behind the rubbish-bin, looking over at Daniel with apprehension. The pervasive darkness made it difficult to make out the creature fully, but Daniel was affirmed more or less in what he'd seen before.

The creature was small as a rabbit, but bipedal, with a round oval head topped with an even rounder, domelike shape, which perfectly mimicked the sort of cap a human would wear—it even had a billed flap at the front. The cap-shape was smooth and dark in color, but sprinkled over the surface were a number of small, white dots bizarrely reminiscent of sesame seeds. The rest of the animal's body was a lighter color, probably pale pink or orange if Daniel had to guess, though the darkness made it impossible to say for sure. The creature's body was covered in rumpled feathers, all the way down from its head (at least the part beneath the odd, caplike thing) to its tiny feet. The latter didn't end in talons like a normal bird's would, either.

The creature, upon realizing it had Daniel's attention, let out another warbling sound and timidly stepped out fully into the alley. _It walks on its feet like a person,_ Daniel found himself marveling, the thought echoing distantly in his mind from far away.

Once the creature had emerged completely from the shadows, abandoning the shelter of the rubbish-bin, Daniel was startled to see that instead of typical bird wings it actually sported a petite pair of feathered _arms._ He craned his neck forward, unable to believe his eyes, but there they were: the creature's arms came out from its body just like a human's, even ending in five-fingered, impossibly tiny hands. These were still feathered, like the rest of its body, but clearly they weren't built to fly.

"Wow," Daniel breathed, more awed now than frightened.

The creature stared up at him, meeting Daniel's pale blue eyes with its own dark, perfectly round ones. Daniel belatedly noticed that the creature sported a feathered tail as well, fanning out behind it and looking sorely bedraggled from the rain. The pitiful sight finally prompted him to move.

Slowly, very slowly, he crept toward it, pulling himself first to a crouching position and then crawling forward one centimetre at a time.

"What _are_ you?" he whispered softly to the creature, torn between lingering fear of the unknown and a new sense of wonder. He reached out his hand again, trembling, in the creature's direction, wanting to test whether or not the small thing would be prompted to run away.

The creature shook again as Daniel drew near, but didn't try to shrink back from his hand. "Biiiii?" it warbled again, piteously. To Daniel's great surprise, it then took another couple of tottering, uncertain steps toward him on tiny legs. "Biii? Bii, eb-biiiii...?"

Hearing its cries properly, Daniel could tell that the high-pitched sounds the creature made were nearly as strange as its appearance. They sounded scarcely more animal than human, almost like...well, like _words_. Daniel didn't pause to dwell on it, suddenly preoccupied by other things that grappled for his concern. He saw large gaps in the creature's tail where its feathers were missing, either crumpled badly out of place or completely torn out. He glanced it over and saw other small patches littering the rest of its body, where the tiny feathers were missing in clumps. The creature, in fact, seemed to have a variety of painful-looking marks and scrapes, speaking plainly of an ill fortune that went beyond anything the rain had done.

Daniel felt a swell of protective anger rise within him at the thought. He hardly believed that the small, shaking form in front of him could possess a mind to fight anything else on its own, not when it was so obviously scared, and needing help.

That protective feeling erased the last of his doubt. Daniel took a deep breath, steeling himself. Slowly, he closed the final handspan of distance between himself and the tiny creature, reaching out so that his fingers barely grazed the top of its head.

Immediately, a sudden feeling of _warmth_ flooded him—not at the point of contact, but deep from within his own chest. The sensation was dizzyingly familiar, something Daniel thought he might have experienced once or twice in his entire life. Insubstantial moments, long forgotten, when he'd been laying half-asleep in the wake of a particularly wonderful dream...

He felt the last of his fear drain away to nothing, as surely and easily as if it had never been.

"It's okay," Daniel breathed, water dripping down his face as he adjusted his body to hover protectively above the small creature below. He ignored the water running into his eyes, curling forward so that his body sheltered the small figure from the rain. He held out a hand for it, and immediately found his index finger gripped tightly in both of the creature's tiny feathered hands.

"It's okay. Don't be scared," Daniel repeated, hardly even aware of what he was promising. He somehow _knew_ that the creature was able to understand his words, though, and could hear the honest truth in their sincerity. "You don't have to be afraid anymore, not ever again. I swear, I'll protect you, I'll keep you safe...I promise, as long as I live."

As soon as Daniel had finished his declaration, a beacon light appeared in the air before him: a strange, luminescent glowing sphere had materialized seemingly out of nothing at all, floating in place serenely overhead. The sphere making no movement nor sound, only shining a soft white that didn't hurt to see. It went completely undisturbed by the forces of gravity and the alley's shadows, waiting.

Daniel's eyes widened when it appeared, but he didn't flinch away; not even when the orb finally dimmed and sank down to hover directly before his eyes. Dreamlike, Daniel reached for it, using the hand that wasn't being held onto by the creature's small fingers. The floating sphere came to a rest in Daniel's palm, and stopped glowing completely before it suddenly disappeared. It deposited a strange, hard white object nearly reminiscent of a cell phone into Daniel's hand.

The object was meant for him. Daniel could sense its purpose without being told, even though he didn't have any idea of what it was. He curled his fingers firmly around the device, his hand coming up to rest atop the creature's capped head. The two of them were a team, now. Partners. Daniel knew he would protect this creature with his life.

The animal gave another, warbling sound. Its high-pitched cries sounded relieved, now, instead of worried. It ran forward without any hesitation whatsoever, launching itself desperately against the cavity of Daniel's chest so it could bury its face against his shirt. Daniel's arms came up to hold it securely, standing up so he could walk with them both out of the alley.

He didn't feel any fear at all.


End file.
